


The Hummingbird

by TheSaddleman



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Additional fluff, Birds, F/M, Fluff, Humour, More Fluff, No Angst, Spirit Animals, a tiny bit of foreshadowing, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a tiring adventure, Clara and the Doctor have an unusual encounter with a tiny lifeform on the planet Earth. (Inspired by a tweet posted by Jenna Coleman.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hummingbird

**Author's Note:**

> This fluffy story was inspired by an utterly charming tweet that Jenna Coleman posted here in mid-July 2016: https://twitter.com/Jenna_Coleman_/status/756151154401304576
> 
> This story is set in Series 9 after "The Witch's Familiar" but otherwise I haven't really gone out of my way to put it anywhere specific. Obviously before "Face the Raven". 
> 
> This is just a fun little trifle that wanted itself to be written after I saw Jenna's tweet.
> 
> EDIT: The text has been slightly edited to delete a reference to Pokemon Go I didn't think fit here.

There are days in the life of a time traveller after which you are simply lucky to still be breathing when the time finally comes for your head to hit a pillow.

It can be a serious business. One wrong step, one misplaced ripple in a pond and _boom_! Oblivion City. A bad day for everyone and red faces among those few who are left behind to pick up the pieces.

Dalek invasions. Cybermen incursions. Zygon impersonations. Sontaran battles. Slitheen schemes. Adipose, uh, whatever the hell Adipose do. Look cute. Well, they look cute because they’ve sucked the fat out of their victims. True, the occasional victim is grateful (they eventually decided trying to invade Hollywood was a pointless exercise), but, for the most part, Adipose = bad day.

The Doctor and Clara Oswald were just coming off a day like this. They had just saved an entire planet — again — from being enslaved by some tyrannical overlord — again. Clara had been tossed into a dungeon — again — and the Doctor had swooped down to rescue her — again — though he found she’d managed to get out by way of a secret passage she’d found out about when she’d befriended the prince — again. 

After yet another harrowing escape back to the TARDIS, the Doctor had piloted her to land on Earth sometime in the relative past; Clara had suggested a quiet destination where they could decompress before she had to return to her classroom and the Doctor had to return to, uh, whatever it was he did when he wasn’t with her.

“Doctor?” Clara’s voice called out. The ship’s yearometer was knackered (again), so the Doctor was inside trying to fix it while Clara was taking a look around the outside.

“What is it, Clara?” the Doctor replied, interrupting his swearing at the infernal device in the console. He’d run out of the usual curses and had started on more creative terms like “scullion” and was glad of the respite. He downed tools and headed for the door. “I still don’t know what bloody day it is. For all we know we could be missing some grand old event, like a battle or a king’s birthday party, or … oh…”

For a moment the Doctor couldn’t believe his eyes. Sitting on a log that was lying alongside a tall oak tree, his companion Clara sat very still in the partial shade, her huge brown eyes looking upwards as if somehow it might be possible for her to catch a glimpse of the lifeform that was at this very moment perched delicately on top of her head. Then again, the Doctor knew she was somehow able to inflate her eyes to look even bigger. But that tended to only happen when she was upset. Right now, though, though she looked a little dubious at her sudden “houseguest,” she wasn’t exactly in dire straits.

“Doctor,” she said. “You’ve been around a while. What does it mean when a hummingbird lands on your head?”

The Doctor smiled as Clara’s gaze turned to him. The hummingbird, meanwhile, seemed to be in no hurry to go anywhere. It continued to enjoy its perch, its vibrating wings stilled as it took in its new surroundings.

“Is it that new aftershave you bought on Capalman II?” the Doctor suggested.

“I don’t wear aftershave, I wear perfume, Doctor. And no, that stuff got thrown away after it started attracting bees.” Clara had a quick flash of memory of a rather awkward poetry class where she tried, unsuccessfully, to convince her students that her “space boyfriend” hadn’t arranged for a small swarm of bees to chase her around the school the same day she was teaching Ogden Nash’s “The Birds to the Bees,” though Mr. Armitage had given her a kudo for original thinking. The perfume, which she had to concede did have a somewhat polleny nose, was summarily junked.

None of which helped Clara solve the mystery of why a hummingbird had decided to use her head as a resting place. She hadn’t the heart to disturb it, but at the same time she couldn’t sit on a log all day with a hummingbird on her head.

“Don’t just stand there, do something?” she said to the Doctor, phrasing it as a question as he looked somewhat lost, too.

“There’s always room for one more companion,” he said. He kept his distance, hesitant to spook the little creature. His hand reached inside his jacket pocket and he smiled. "Just stay absolutely still.”

“OK, not that I’m planning to go anywhere as long as this little guy …” She heard a quick shutter-like sound come from the Doctor’s phone. “You didn’t just take a photo of me.”

The Doctor smiled and put the phone away. 

“That better not turn up on Instagram like that one shot of me and the giant rose.”

“You know that was an accident, Clara. I was sending it to Vastra and it went to Courtney Woods instead.”

“Don’t send that picture to Vastra or to anyone else. This is humiliating.”

“I think the hummingbird goes with your eyes.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. But when people accessorize, isn’t that the sort of the thing people are supposed to say rather than, ‘You’ve got a bird on your head?’ I’ve seen hats that look like that. Come to think of it, Clara, I’ve _worn_ hats that look like that.”

Suddenly, the bird moved, enough for Clara to notice. It actually felt like it was nestling down.

“Oh god,” Clara moaned. “It’s snuggling down, isn’t it? No, no, you keep that camera in your pocket. If it’s going to make a nest on my head I just want that to be a fond memory between us, not something that gets shown at the UNIT Christmas party.” 

The Doctor sulked a little and put the camera back. Fortunately, he knew the TARDIS’ exterior camera captured everything in such high resolution that Kate Stewart would be able to count the feathers on the hummingbird’s tiny noggin when he uploaded the footage later.

“OK, now I’m starting to get itchy. I’m going to have to scare it away,” Clara said.

Before she reached up to scratch, however, the hummingbird finally launched itself from its perch, its wings vibrating nearly faster than the eye could see. Clara expected it to head off in some random direction. Instead, it hovered in front of her face for a second, almost as if in thank you, and then headed off towards a flower garden down the hill, its batteries evidently now fully recharged. She smiled, her dimples at full bore as the Doctor sat down on the log beside her. 

“So, Clara, how would you rate that encounter against, oh, Daleks, Cybermen, Missy, giant spiders, Derren Brown …”

“Oh, hummingbirds are by far the more terrifying!” Clara said as she and the Doctor laughed. She reached down and held his hand. Until recently, the Doctor had disliked being touched, but little moments like this had become more common, especially since Skaro. 

“You never answered my question, Doctor,” Clara continued.

“Hmm?”

“What does it mean to have a hummingbird land on your head?”

“Well, Clara, as a spirit animal for aboriginal North Americans it means someone who enjoys life…”

“Sounds right…”

“Is independent…”

“You better believe it, mister…”

“Someone who is playful, resilient …”

“I try my best …” Clara yawned and leaned against the Doctor’s arm.

“And it means you travel great distances tirelessly. So I suppose you really could identify with the hummingbird. You often wear a raven pendant around your neck, too. It means you are wise, but you want people to pay heed to what you have to say. Well, I always listen to you, Clara. … Clara?”

He looked down to see the beautiful brown eyes had closed and she was totally relaxed, but sound asleep. The Doctor considered waking her and taking her to her bedroom in the TARDIS, but the weather was clear, it wasn’t too hot, and the large oak tree supporting their backs was still shading the log they were sitting on. She looked too peaceful to disturb. _Ahh_ , they could relax for a few minutes.

The Doctor realized that he, too, was nodding off. He hadn’t slept in close to a week and, while he rarely needed sleep, he did need to recharge his batteries. OK, he thought, just a little kip…

Suddenly, there was a flutter of wind against his face and the hummingbird hovered in front of his eyes. Sadly, not all languages were translated by the TARDIS and he’d never bothered to learn hummingbird. Still, he risked a smile and winked at his feathered friend.

“Thanks, pal,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> The discussion of the spirit animal meaning of hummingbirds is adapted from information found here: http://www.spiritanimal.info/hummingbird-spirit-animal/
> 
> The reference to the symbolism of the raven (which made me totally rethink Face the Raven) was adapted from information found here: http://www.spirit-animals.com/raven/
> 
> The bit about the Doctor swearing was inspired by a reading of a profane historical letter performed by Peter Capaldi at an event called Letters Live in March 2016.
> 
> The "giant rose" photo references a photo of Jenna Coleman during a recent visit to New York City that she posted to her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BH7sZK4hI7w/ 
> 
> In case anyone is wondering why Derren Brown keeps getting name-dropped in my stories, this is based upon a deleted scene from "Face the Raven" in which Clara implies that she and the Doctor have had ... dealings with the magician.


End file.
